For 6,000 Chinese pensioners it was supposed to be the trip of a lifetime: a
visit to Beijing to proudly sing before the country's top leaders.

Choirs from across the land signed up for the package tour, paying 2,000 yuan (£200) a head for room, board and a chance to perform on the hallowed stage of the Great Hall of the People in Tiananmen Square.

Here, underneath a giant blood red star, the OAPs were supposed to belt out a nostalgic medley of songs from the Communist revolution, the days of their youth. Many of the troupes had pressed their finest uniforms for the occasion.

When they discovered, then, that they had been relegated to a side hall, no leaders would witness their singing, and that a tour of the capital had been dropped from their itinerary, a revolution broke out in earnest, culminating in a 14-hour, overnight siege of the venue and a spate of hospitalisations.

"My troupe of 131 performers arrived at the venue at 2pm [on Saturday] on a bus arranged by the organisers," explained Dai Cheng, the director of the Changzhou Choir from Jiangsu province, in a statement he issued on the internet.

"We were sitting quite far from the stage, but we could see some people were arguing. When I listened in, I could hear them shouting: 'Liar! Liar! Give us back our money!'

"It seems the schedule promised a tour of the Olympic area but the organisers did not arrange it."

He added that some troupes were disgruntled at not being chosen for the final performance, having been weeded out in an earlier round. "Some of them grabbed the microphone and said that since they could not perform, no one should perform!" said Mr Dai.

For hours, the arguments raged. "At 7pm, a comrade in my troupe in his 70s passed out and it was quite serious. He went to hospital. Then another three fainted with low blood sugar and then after that another two," he said, adding: "The atmosphere in the hall was getting tense".

In a bid to starve out the elderly protesters, the organisers insisted that no food was allowed inside the Great Hall.

However, the pensioners had all lived through tougher conditions – they remained inside the Great Hall until 5am on Sunday, when finally a man appeared with a full cash refund.

A spokesman for the tour company which organised the trip, Shengshi Huange, which claims to operate under the umbrella of China's Culture ministry, said they had 44 top leaders ready to attend the show, but were afraid that the situation had become unsafe.

"I cannot tell you who the leaders are, but the highest one was a vice chief of the National People's Congress and there were also government ministers," said Liu Xin, the spokesman.

"The audience in the hall was quite emotional though, so we felt unable to guarantee the safety of the leaders.

"We did promise a one-day tour around Beijing. We thought since it is so cold now that the seniors might not be so keen on it, and they would be more passionate about the performance. But it turned out they were very passionate about the tour too."